COVID-19 accelerated a shift to e-commerce by 5 years

Before talking about e-commerce solutions, it's important to know why they are important to a business, now more than ever. In fact, they are essential to a business that sells products.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, predictions were made for 2020 about e-commerce sales. They are significant in an of themselves.

Pre-COVID-19 Statistics

1. The total value of global retail ecommerce sales will reach $4.13T in 2020.

2. In 2018, retail ecommerce sales grew 23.3% over the previous year.

3. Ecommerce retail sales accounted for 14.1% of global retail sales in 2019.

4. Almost half of American small businesses do not own a website.

How has COVID-19 affected these trends?

As the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes our world, more consumers have begun shopping online in greater numbers and frequency. According to new data from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. For example, the pandemic helped drive Wal-Mart's e-commerce sales up 97% in its last quarter. Target set a sales record as its same-day fulfillment services grew 273% in the quarter. The growth in e-commerce due to the pandemic has set a high bar for what’s now considered baseline growth. According to the Q2 2020 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. retail e-commerce reached $211.5 billion, up 31.8% from the first quarter, and 44.5% year-over-year.

BOT can help your company take advantage of these new growth trends, increasing your revenue and reliably and securely.